#edit : more than 10 notes....... impressive | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

stephaniebrownslover · 2 months ago

Text

[Kieran Valentine Backstory Headcanons—Part 1/?]

Timeline: Him becaming a vampire and his first days as one

Okay so I was thinking about Valentine's backstory before everything, and I saw someone saying he was a war veteran (?) but when I searched for it, I couldn't find it anywhere.

So. I kindaaaa designed my own headcanon backstory for him and I swear I wasn't planning to add this much angst. (if I'm not exaggerating, this one is a bit angsty)

Anyways, this is suck and so OOC and I hateeeeee it.

Edit: omggggg why this shit is pure angst I HATE it, I wanted to make hurt/comfort with some cute moments, not hurt/no comfort and this took so that I couldn't add anything nice in it and this sucks:(((

Trigger Warnings: blood, manipulation, mention of death, self-hatred, general vampire themes

Note:

Monster High wiki says this about vampires

It also says this about Valentine

So I like to think he doesn't drink blood, that's why his eyes are pink :3

How he became a vampire

Valentine hated vampires with a burning passion. His father, who was his role model, who he wanted to be just like him when he grew up, died during a brutal attack by a vampire in hunger crisis when he was just 10 years old. Little Valentine, who witnessed this with his own eyes, hated vampires.

Until he turned 17, he began to kill vampires, who stole his life from him, by his own capabilites. Although he was still very young, he was hunting vampires without caring about what would happen to himself, thanks to his heart burning with hatred.

Of course, he wasn't as good at this as an adult, he couldn't even get close, but back then, Valentine's name was easily heard at the vampire council, since no one dared to do what would happen to them after killing a vampire. Most people didn't know the existince of vampires, and the ones who knee, were feared of them.

Stoker, who was assigned to take care of this business personally, decided to pay a visit to this novice hunter.

Completely headcanon: In order for a person to turn into a vampire, vampire blood must be mixed with their own blood.

There was a fight that lasted quite a short time, in which Valentine was deadly wounded. Stoker dropped his guard when he was about to suck the blood of Valentine, who was on the verge of death. Stoker had underestimated Valentine's hate too much.

Stoker's blood dripped on Valentine, who stabbed his sword into him just as the vampire's teeth were about to touch his neck. And Valentine, who does not know how people turn into vampires, was unaware that the vampire blood smeared on his open wounds would change his life forever.

He had turned into something he hated. He had become a terrible monster that he would have preferred to die a thousand times rather than to live as one.

He hated himself. He hated that his wounds healed so quickly, he hated some of his teeth fell out and new ones came out instead, he hated that his vision was getting better and better. He hated, hated, hated it.

But more importantly, he was afraid of himself.

Valentine, who started sobbing, did not know what to do. He was frozen. He had reached his hands to his teeth, trying to make sense of what was happening. But he couldn't even think of anything.

Valentine, who accidentally turned into a vampire, did not know what to do, he was in such a scared state that Stoker decided to show mercy for the first time in the hundreds of years he has lived and will live. The main reason for this was that he was quite impressed by Valentine's stubbornness.

However, of course, the older vampire would not deign to be nice to someone who did not have his own interests for no reason.

Stoker had agreed to take the young one between his poisoned arms in order to make him his henchman, who was charged with doing his own work. And there was no need for the boy who was standing in front of Stoker's, and disgusted with himself to know about it.

When Stoker bent down and held out his hand to him, Valentine looked at the gloved hand that was standing in front of him in tears. He did not know what he was supposed to do. He didn't know what was the right decision. Time had stopped for him, and it would never flow the same way again. At least, for him.

Stoker said a few sentences to convince him. But when he saw that Valentine was still looking at him with the same confused and undecided gaze, he was sure what he should say.

He told Valentine that he no longer had a place among people. He talked about how everyone would mention Valentine's name with pure hatred and not daring to approach him out of fear.

And he didn't forget to add that no matter how hard Valentine tried, he would always be subject to prejudice. The person who told him this was Stoker himself. Valentine could never be a part of society again.

As the tears that were slowly flowing from Valentine's eyes accelerated, Stoker knew that he had put his finger on the right point. He also talked about how Valentine didn't have to live like this.

If Valentine came with Stoker, he would be accepted among other vampires. No one would judge hin and hate him just because he was a strong creature. He would be free. And more importantly, he could be himself without being exposed to fearful eyes.

Valentine took the hand extended to him. And as he walked slowly towards Stoker's vehicle ahead, he left his old life behind along with his soul.

It was not going to be easy for him to adjust to his new life. He didn't know what kind of life awaited him when he got into a luxury car that he had never even dreamed of before.

At least he wasn't crying anymore, instead, hhe was just watching out of the window with curious eyes that they hadn't managed to take away from him. He was surprisingly calm as he watched his house, which he could never return to, disappear from sight every second.

The inside of the car was quiet, too quiet. The vampire, who had radically changed Valentine's life, gave his attention only to the book in his hand. Although he seemed to be paying no attention to his surroundings, Valentine knew Stoker could prevent him from making the slightest escape move. Valentine knew this because he could do the same thing himself now. His reflexes were highly developed compared to before.

When he entered the Council building for the first time, he felt some vampires' contemptuous, some vampires' curious, and others' only pity-filled stares on him. For the first time in his life, he had become the very centre of attention and strangely, he liked this.

Stoker took him to a room, and then said he could stay here until he was done and then they could go home.

So, Valentine did as what he was told until he learned every little detail in the room. And when there was nothing left that interested him, he decided to tour the council building.

He didn't expect to see the vampire who brought him here just as he opened the door. When they got into the car again, there was silence again, but this time it was the kind of silence that was uncomfortable for any type of creature.

Valentine had given all his attention to the road, which he could still see even though it was quite dark. That's why what Stoker said caught him off guard.

They also turned his mother into a vampire. Vampires cared about traditions, and being connected to each other was one of those traditions. Besides, their population had already decreased quite a lot and they needed new nobles. Of course, they couldn't make everyone they see a vampire, but they could turn a vampire's close family member who was still alive.

Valentine said nothing, he only blamed himself. His mother's life had been ruined by his own stupid stubbornness. Ruining the lives of everyone who was near him was probably the only thing he was good at.

They didn't speak at all the rest of the way.

Learning how to get fed

When Valentine first arrived, he was bombarded with intense teaching sessions. Vampires were noble and elegant creatures, so it was more important than anything that he received a proper education.

Fortunately, thanks to his sharp intelligence, he was able to understand his lessons quickly. In fact, he was learning so fast that if he continued like this, he might even go to the Vampire Academy next year.

Meanwhile, things weren't that decent between him and his mother. It wasn't good, but at least it wasn't bad. His mother wasn't angry at him or anything, she even thanked him for saving her life.

There was just something that Valentine couldn't quite put his finger on it. She was distant. She was cold, and it was as if she wasn't there even when she was with him. What had happened to his old loving mother?

His skin was cold. His skin was as cold as a dead person's and his heart wasn't beating. He couldn't see himself in the mirror. He couldn't even go out into the sunlight without taking the necessary precautions. And he didn't like it at all.

He could have been richer than ever before, he could have had more books than he would ever get in his whole life despite his dreams, and he could have even gotten a great education, but it was all just a sweet illusion.

Still, he thought that if he kept acting, one day all this wouldn't hurt so much anymore. If he never took off the mask on his face, he could forget who he was and integrate with the mask. That's what he should have done anyway, just like his mother.

He easily adopted the aristocratic clothing style of that period. The only thing that made him feel like the person he was was his clothes, which were extravagantly stylish and perfectly groomed. Moreover, many vampires also liked the style he had. He could even communicate with them if he felt ready. At least, this could have helped him feel like he belonged somewhere a few years earlier.

After about a month had passed, everything had started to go well for him. He felt that he was getting used to being a vampire, and he was scared crazy about it. But he was learning to drown his fears.

Gradually, he also began to get rid of his timid and helpless personality. He knew he was not the weak boy he had been the day he first came to Stoker's castle. He was trying to learn something new whenever he had the opportunity. He had a really curious personality, the kind of curiosity that would put him in danger.

He might have started acting like a vampire, but there was one thing he could never do. Valentine refused to drink blood.

Strangely, he believed that if he started drinking blood, he would never be himself again. And since that's what he really wanted anyway, he should have been able to drink blood. He didn't realize that he was lying to himself.

(it's a ridiculous headcanon because I don't exactly know how emotional vampires born)

Valentine, unlike his mother, had become an emotional vampire. Stoker attributed the reason for this to the intense emotions he felt before and after becoming a vampire.

Because he hadn't been fed in any way for the last month since he arrived, or used anything to support his iron needs, he had started to lose strength more and more.

He had huge eyebags that were growing day by day, his skin had taken on a too pale tone even for a vampire. He couldn't use his powers, he couldn't go out in the sun despite all the precauiton items he used. He felt so tired most of the time.

He was desperate, he felt weaker than ever, and he never once thought about drinking blood. However, since he was an emotional vampire, what he really needed were emotions. Blood would only give him energy. If he wanted to be strong, he had to feed on emotions.

In fact, Valentine didn't actually make up the information that he had to break a heart to be strong on his own. The person who told him this was Stoker himself.

Valentine's refusal to drink blood in defiance of vampire traditions was getting on Stoker's nerves. And that's why he believed that if he led Valentine to a rather difficult way of eating, he would have no choice but to drink blood. He also used hatred because it was the most intense emotion that the young vampire felt.

According to Stoker, Valentine was a vampire who fed on hatred because of his previous life, and he needed people's hate to be strong.

Valentine, who was still very new to it and was suffering from a lack of strength caused by not eating anything, asked how to do it. He had been hungry for so long that he no longer cared about opposing his own personality as long as no blood included.

Stoker said the first thing that came to his mind, who could be more hateful than a girl whose heart was broken into a thousand pieces by her darling love?

And Valentine believed it. Moreover, for hundreds of years, he continued because no one even cared to offer him another option.

After the first heart he broke, he gained the ability of hypnosis thanks to his vampire powers. It was actually quite an ironic situation. He had acquired the ability to make people love him by making them hate himself.

Stoker saw that despite all the hearts he had broken, the stubborn vampire still insisted on not drinking blood. That's why he gave up on his goal.

He was looking with disgust at the iron supporters who entered his castle for the first time because of Valentine. Although feeding on emotions restored Valentine's strength, he still needed more blood or iron supporters for some features, such as being able to go out in the sun.

After Valentine learned to eat, he had only one thing left in front of him; getting used to his new life.

And Valentine still hated vampires with passion.

..................................................................................

Bro listens Malice Mizer because I say so(I'll say this in my every Valentine writing)

SOMEONE TAKE THE WORDS AWAY FROM ME WHY DID I WRITE THIS I HATE MYSELF I WASN'T PLANNING TO MAKE HIM SO SO MISERABLE I'M SO SORRY THAT WASN'T MY INTENTION

I KNOW THIS WHOLE POST SUCKS SO HARD I KNOW AND I'M SORRY FOR STEALING YOUR TIME

I'M SORRYYYYYY I SWEAR I'LL MAKE HIM HAPPY ONE DAY IF I WON'T STOP WRITING FOR HIM AFTER THIS

I kinda want to write him with Spelldon to make this up but I know nothing about Greek Mythology, not even the basics so it would be really weird lol

#I've destroyed the joyful spirit of MH :((((((#monster high g1 #kieran valentine #monster high #monster high headcanons #kieran valentine headcanons #headcanon #valentine #valentine headcanons #lord stoker #angst #fullyyyyyy angst #I'm sorry it's my fault

35 notes · View notes

trillscienceofficer · 3 months ago

Text

from Cinefantastique Vol 30 #9-10, November 1998

ROXANN DAWSON: The actress who plays fiery Klingon half-breed engineer Torres on coping with the mommy track.

By Anna L. Kaplan

The fiery B’Elanna Torres, played by Roxann Dawson, found herself in a serious, adult relationship with Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) during VOYAGER'S fourth season. Their earlier friendship was heading in this direction during the third season, but finally blossomed into something else this year. As an additional challenge for the actress, Dawson had to play increasingly steamy scenes with McNeill while going through her first pregnancy. The writers opted to hide the pregnancy, with the exception of a special two part episode called “The Killing Game.” For the most part, Dawson found herself under a newly invented engineering smock, or behind a console, or shot in closeup. “Mostly I get knocked out in the first 10 minutes of the episode, and recover somewhere near the ending after all the action sequences have been shot,” she said. “That’s how we’re working around it.”

Dawson spoke about these challenges in November of 1997, having finished more than half of the season, and not knowing what would happen later. She was seven months pregnant at the time. She said, ‘I'm feeling great. I’ve had a good pregnancy so far. It’s only recently that I’ve been slowed down a bit.” She added some wishful thinking, saying, “If I’m late, which I probably will be, it will almost coincide with our hiatus, which is just a grand coincidence, and that would be great. Hopefully, they could at least get my presence in the last few episodes, if only just a little bit. So if everything goes well I won’t miss any episodes.”

Dawson enthused, “I love the scripts they’ve been coming up with. I love our new cast addition. I think it’s adding a little spice to all of the characters as we deal with Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). I’m just really impressed with the scripts. I think that they've been very strong this year and I like what they’re doing with my character.”

The episode “Day of Honor” brought Paris and B’Elanna together, while they were waiting to die, floating in space. It proved a difficult show to do. For one thing, the actors were shot against bluescrcen, visual effects to be added later. “I liked it a lot,” said Dawson. “It was all special effects. We also had to go in later on and loop every single line of that. Plus they needed to edit quite a bit because of the budget. It’s very expensive to do so many scenes in front of a bluescreen. I felt that it lost some of its bite because of these things. It’s tough enough doing emotionally revealing scenes, but to have the elements so working against you, I definitely felt that it was flawed.”

She continued, “There was more dialogue (originally). When I went in to loop it I had to rethink the way I was going to say things. Having to make those adjustments in post are never desirable, because they can never match what you may have done in actual production. They’re compromises that have to be made, especially when you’re working in a sci-fi series, but you hate it to have to happen on intimate moments. Perhaps for people who didn’t know what was missing, it wasn’t a big deal. But I sense it, and I know where I felt the beats should have been. I wasn’t completely satisfied with ‘Day of Honor.’”

In “Scientific Method” the romance progressed, but while the crew was under the control of alien experimenters. Tom and B’Elanna became passionate at some inappropriate times, leading to at least a little speculation about who was really in control. Noted Dawson, “When we were about to shoot it, I told Robbie that I felt that what we were doing was the real Tom and B'Elanna, but it’s sort of like after you've had a couple of drinks at a bar. The aliens supplied the liquor, and so it made [us] a little bit less sophisticated than we should have been. Basically everything was very real. We were just alien-tipsy, I guess. We talked a long time when we got those scenes, wondering, now is this really what we would do? Would we really risk this sort of thing when we have our own cabins? I thought, maybe if you had just a little bit of this alien liquor, that it would make you take that step you just normally wouldn’t. That probably fueled the fire, but the fire was definitely there.”

Some of the scenes advancing the Paris/Torres relationship were added on. "We’re all confused right now," said Dawson. “For example, we’re shooting additional scenes and reshoots for four episodes, so it’s hard to keep track of what’s going into which episode when they add these extra scenes. We’ve been coming up short on a lot of scripts recently, and I don’t know why. It’s causing us to have to take a day and actually add more material to a lot of the shows.

“What I have been missing in their relationship is what really makes them tick as people together. We’ve seen the passion, and we’ve had some superficial discussions, and we understand the attraction. I haven’t seen a lot of the real close friendship. Maybe in the first season in the episode ‘Faces’ where there was some discussion of our past and our parents. We just shot a really nice scene where you just see these two friends dealing with some very difficult situations. I love that they’re starting to explore that now in the writing.”

“Random Thoughts” focused on a telepathic society where violent thoughts are considered crimes. Torres is convicted of violent thought and sentenced to have her memory engrams purged. “One of the things I love about B’Elanna is that she is flawed,” said Dawson. “She’s got this temper. As much as she has become a better person since the beginning of the series, she still screws up, not that this is a complete screw up. It's very human to think negative things, but she definitely goes overboard in her images. It’s interesting, this whole discussion of thought police and what we are allowed to think and not think, and the kind of trouble that you could get in. It’s actually kind of contemporary.”

What exactly does B'Elanna think about to get into trouble? Dawson recalled, “It’s actually pretty minor. It’s innocuous. It’s somebody bumping into me at a market place, but because I have a temper my first instinct is to lash out until I realize that’s an irrational thought. But the thought is out there already. Because these people are very sensitive to these thoughts, that becomes a crime. It’s very tricky. I think it brings up a lot of interesting issues.”

Like many of the actors, Dawson believes that VOYAGER has often resolved conflict too quickly. She was happy to bring something back of the Maquis, when Chakotay (Robert Beltran) gets a message from the Alpha Quadrant in “Hunters.” Noted Dawson, “There was a really interesting scene with Robert Beltran when he reveals information to me about the Maquis. I have to spend the rest of the show trying to deal with this information. I love that they’re bringing that up again. It’s one of the things that I feel was dropped too early. I would love them to deal with it some more. There is some encrypted Starfieet message that still hasn't been decoded by the end of the episode. I would love it if they made a choice that Starfieet comes down hard in saying that, ‘Maybe all the Maquis should be thrown in the brig until we can get you home.’ I think it would be interesting to see how Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) deals with that, and what kind of upset it might cause among the crew. It’s an opportunity I'd hate for them to miss.”

In fact, the message was decoded with some complications in the season’s last show. “Hope and Fear.” Beltran wished the writers had used Dawson's idea, saying “That would have been very interesting, but it doesn’t say that.” Starfleet tells them they cannot help the Voyager.

On the show’s lack of conflict, Dawson noted, “I think they wanted us all to get along pretty quickly. I think the great thing about this year is that some of the friction is coming back. I think that we need that. I think that that’s perfectly human, it’s right, and it's dramatic, and it makes the show much more interesting. It’s so much more interesting for us to fight, and to figure out how to get along, rather than just getting along.”

Dawson talked about her work, saying, “I know that they’re really starting to phase me down quite a bit. I’m spending a lot more time in sickbay. We’re in a series of episodes where we’re dealing with an alien race that is in a five-episode arc. They are called ‘Hunters’ in that they like to go after their prey and torture them to death. This is what their entire existence is about.”

Dawson got into more of the action during both parts of “The Killing Game” in which the hunting Hirogen used the holodecks on Voyager to experience World War II. Dawson plays Bridgette, a member of the French resistance who has gotten pregnant by one of the Nazis and uses that to her advantage. “We’re being experimented on,” she said. “They get some information from our data banks, and decide to try to create a war among us by re-creating World War II. They allow me to be pregnant in that episode, which is a lot of fun, not to have to cover it up.”

Dawson commented on the current TREK women, saying with a laugh, “I think that we’ve changed a lot, and I think it’s terrific. I think we've done it in a really special way. I think that these characters that we have are very unique. If you go from Dax (Terry Farrell) to Kira (Nana Visitor) to B'Elanna to Kate's character, to Jeri’s character, I think that they haven’t just done this stereotypical woman-with-balls kind of thing. They’ve really made them individuals, and also still women, which is great. I think that it’s showing a certain amount of maturity on the part of the writers and the audience in terms of accepting us.”

In addition to acting, Dawson also writes, and at the time of this interview she was anxiously awaiting the publication of her first novel. She explained, “I’m working on a trilogy of sci-fi novels that Simon and Schuster commissioned me to do with another writer. We’ve completed the first book. We are waiting for its release. We're done with it. I’m very proud of it. And we've outlined the second book. The trilogy is 'The Tenebrea Trilogy’ and the first book is ‘Entering Tenebrea.’”

She continued, “I wrote a play which was produced at the University of Minnesota, and also workshopped at Circle Repertory. It was my first full-length play. I’ve had a couple of one acts produced as well. But I’ve never written in novel form, so this was really great. The writer that I’m working with, Daniel Graham, is wonderful. He’s got a scientific mind and knowledge. We work very well together. We sort of balance each other out. We completed [the book] probably five months ago, and it’s literally been sitting here waiting for them to bring it out. We’re just waiting for it to go.”

Dawson was also awaiting the arrival of her daughter. Emma Rose Dawson was born early, instead of late, on January 16, 1998, just after Dawson shot “Vis A Vis” and one scene of “The Omega Directive.” She missed only a few episodes, but returned well in time for the finale, as she had hoped. □

#voy #trek magazines #roxann dawson #b'elanna torres #cinefantastique #that title makes me want to claw my face off but what can you do

33 notes · View notes

krewekreep · 1 year ago

Text

JJK Headcanons: Suit & Tie Edition

Word count: A lot I wrote this on Mobile. (Would love if somebody comments the word count for me lol)

Summary: JJK as Professionals/Corporate Boys + as BFs ((randomly began to rate them on a scale of 10, this post is really for my amusement—I hope you enjoy!!)) (I’ll update this over time to include all male JJK characters and more details, just really a random thought post), #activepost. (Will also likely end up lengthy so)

Hiromi: Lawyer

Of Course Hiromi would continue his work as a public defense attorney. He’s considerate but neurotic. Fair but cautious. And has a strong sense of principles that make his job perfect for him but also perfect for his various neurosis to fester and continue depressing this overwhelmed man.

As a Partner: At the point Hiromi (probably a mid life crisis) really realizes he’d like a relationship he’d be the guy that has everything planned out in his head but fails miserably somehow. He’s so analytical and emotional (his consideration of others not really the expression of emotion) and would end up a worry wart of sorts about being up to par with whatever imaginary standards he’s projected onto you. Less so than reassurance, you’d just be incline to remind him he doesn’t need to go above and beyond or have super grand gestures to be impressive. Likewise he’d want to communicate (maybe too much) once a conflict or issue occurred and I can see him likely being a bit overbearing with “You okay? Are you realllyyy okay??? You sureeee???” Along with literal hour long sit downs after arguments or disagreements. You end up feeling he can get parental but find him a good balance or synergy to your possibly avoidant or passive (I just end up shutting up completely lmao) conflict style. He’d work way too much in the beginning and maybe even have a moment of conflict with you about it but will level out with time as you will be his literal priority and focus. Diligent and upstanding he’s (in my taste) a 7-8/10. (I’d get immediately tired of his work schedule cause I’m “clingy”)

Nanami: Doctor

While Nanami is canonically coded as an overworked salary man I think in another universe he’s the perfect doctor. Similar to Hiromi but a bit more stoic and willing to work pass his limits. He’s the type to really be working triple, quadruple shifts off nothing but caffeine and the smiles of his patients. I think he’d be a pediatrician, dentist, or the perfect primary care physician. I see him being a talented medical student that actually does it for the love of the work. He’s the doctor everyone has the hugest crush on but are too intimidated to speak to—and who is also assumed to obviously be claimed cause who wouldn’t.

As a Partner: Kento would absolutely have the worst schedule. He’s genuinely, (probably neurotically), earnest and diligent. His patients’ care is his only concern and you would end up finding his work reputation as an anti social coworker pretty incongruent to the yeah quiet, sometimes intimidating but overwhelmingly kind and considerate man. Of course you become his “special” patient (whether you meet him as his patient or outside of work) and you begin to cutely annoy him by always being sick and needing to be seen only by him. He’ll honestly at first find it lightly irritating as a distraction but will realize how his shoulders ease and his breath steadies when he calms at your presence. As a man of a few words, and literally hands on as a health practitioner, he will communicate his love with actions and gifts. You’re surprised at work or date out with your friends with flowers and a note. Or he tells you he doesn’t want you inside all day and left his card on the nightstand. “Buy something for me ;).” How he only is ever cute or flirty in texts, and a shy even bubbling big guy who flushes red when you kiss him on the cheek. He’s the guy the upper admin want to promote but then will be even more unavailable so he doesn’t tell you about it. And at a work dinner when his coworker comments on it, lowers his head in shame for keeping it from you. In an argument, whether he feels right or wrong, he just wants you to calm down. Hate to psychoanalyze but Nanami gives the vibe he overprotects because he wasn’t protected and/or saw those he cared about hurt terribly and that those he treasures he’s pained to see disturbed in any way. So no he doesn’t want to see you mad and rightfully so he doesn’t know how to communicate he wants MORE time with you not less…and how he actually found a better job with better pay in another state so… “Y/N? Absolutely I was wrong to hold it from you…but now that I told you my other plans…would you…” (lmao I’m trolling I’m so sorry). Overall if he drops everything for me he’s a 10/10 cause he’s also my first JJK Husbando anyway blep) Strong, big, and SILENT!

Suguru: Political Consultant

Pre & Post Kenjaku Geto would be someone ending up in politics. Everyone wants to save him and give him his little tattoo shop but this man (of course once any incredibly negative event would happen cause he’s very emo coded) would be at think tanks and conferences and Capital Hill. While not sinister he’s a good bit mischievous (and messy). He’d love it for the sheer drama and mess and blackmail. He’d love how easy it would be to orchestrate against his enemies for whatever his “grand ideas” are…in reality he’s the worst (best) type of personality because he would never be “neutral,” he’d simply let it be known his “side” is whichever and whoever advances his desires. And his allegiances WILL change. He’d be the political actor in all those official photos no one really knows and that’s the point. (damn he’s just inspired a Scandal TV Show AU)

As a Partner: Boy…you better be the most apolitical person ever, devious as all hell, or truly ready to be his simp in all regards. This man will be everywhere but home. He WILL miss dates, I’m so sorry! (Even if he was jobless he’d somehow be late or miss a date and nobody can convince me otherwise.) You’d go to truly bewildering events in terms of scope and breadth of wealth, access, and political influence. As an Aquarius (real life shade too I’m sorry again) he’d be so two faced! You’d hear him drag for someone BAD and then upon meeting them realize THEY think he’s their BEST FRIEND. I’m sorry Geto is messy coded to me and you’d have to be down for being a hater at Dawn. (We’d work as friends not lovers cause I wake up and hate.) He’d spoil you monetarily from the beginning so it’s up to you if you accept them even if their very obligatory feeling. Otherwise, I see him being impressed by your ability to challenge him, call him out, or deny him. He TELLS you you’re going to be his date to an event but maybe he was way too flirty with one of his peers and thought you didn’t notice? He’s left outside in his bespoke suit with happy flowers and a sour face. 😂 BUT, he’ll weirdly respect (even possibly turned on.) Depending on how you play it he’ll be the guy who just won’t leave you alone and loves to bother you into a reaction for his amusement—or (if you decide to simp) a guy who’ll definitely see how far you’ll let him go. He’ll flirt with everyone and openly lightly disrespect you cause honestly he’s likely encountered enough simps before. Yet, the fact it’s out of pure emotion and want for him rather than money or prestige will make him feel guilty and he’ll SLOWLY but EVENTUALLY be a good partner holistically. Even to the degree he’ll break “character” upon any disrespect or unsavory comment made towards you. Politically—(I know for me I’d kill him probably) since he’d be a “only here for my own best and vested interests,” maybe you’d think hard on his principles. Maybe you’d confront him about how his “neutrality” is selfish and he should be able to stand on something and stick to it! Then maybe he’ll just simply bring out a laptop you’ve never seen before, type in a few things facing away from you, and show you terrabytes of collected info on everyone across the spectrum…maybe he’d then sit there bored as you scream “REALLY? NO WAY?? NOT HER??? Okay well I felt like he’d do something like tha….OH EWWWWW.” And scoffs to himself thinking “and that’s only what I know won’t make you throw up…” All in all I see TRUST and sincerity being the biggest dealbreaker given (and it’s fair) to feel like he’s fake with you or unsure of his feelings. But…the way he gets in bed and private lets you accept his real feelings for you. He’s a 6/10 because the flirting would KILL ME. And he’s technically my second and half JJK Husbando. Grown him would still be menace regardless of Kenjaku.

Satoru: Sports Manager/Finance

Now Satoru would either be the nepo baby that abandons it all or the nepo baby that reluctantly accepts his role at his family conglomerate. If he gets his way: I see Satoru as a sports manager. He’s a people person, athletic, and would care about the young athletes in the industry. If we convert the students of Jujutsu to athletes I definitely see him being one of the managers representing the most Olympians and medaled performers. He’s hot in his shades and open shirt suits with his iPhone against his ear and his blackberry in his hand texting off a contract or something…(Sports Manager AU coming up :/)

Now if he accepts his role at his family conglomerate he��s the CEO of an old money finance firm. He hates his life and his job and hates his responsibilities. It would be closer to his feelings of burden in the story cause he’s well off and well respected but it’s because he was born to be, so it’ll be a job of obligation. Yet, he’d definitely be a philanthropist and own a charity. He’d hate (but understand) the criticism so he’d just shrug and do the most he can. He’s the type to stay single (or marry a few times) but adopt and of course Megumi, Yuuji, and Nobara are his kids. He does conferences and speaks at events and otherwise is one of those “good” billionaires. (I’d give him a hard time about where his money comes from while telling him what color Birkin I want…cause duality…)

As a Partner: Sports Manager Satoru will not be as free and it’s likely upon cementing a committed relationship you’ll travel with him across the world. I don’t see Satoru being the kind of guy who can do LONG distance or long period of time without physically being near his partner. You’d be the wife without a ring (only for a short time, he’s definitely a “if you’re down I’m down and I love you so let’s get this show on the road” type man. He’s the kind to wait to find the right one but you’ll be a bit annoyed at how many possible “right ones” are floating around in the world. He’ll chuckle sheepishly cause every event lurks an ex somewhere. Whether for a week or a couple years—and you fight seething next to him as you take a long gulp of the alcohol in your glass. How it gets to you beyond jealousy that maybe he’s a lover boy and not retired yet? How you want to never be a numbered ex in an irritatingly lengthy list… “Did you really have to give ALL of them the partner title?” You say as you cross your arms and huff in a pout. Satoru’s the kind to always wanna laugh or kiss conflict away, usually it worked but not now. “Babe…,” he moves closer to you to which you move farther from him. “Babe…? Please?” When he has to get serious and you’re being avoidant or passive then he’s the manager everyone fears for his easy ferocity. Now your held down with no choice but to face his peering blue eyes. “Hey…I know my…past upsets you. I mean…shit it kinda upsets me too.” The scowl on your face makes him shake out of his intensity to clean up the sentence: “No I mean, I wish I knew how to love better…I wasted a lot of time and energy…and other people’s time and energy…so for what’s it worth I’m trying and we are in it for the long haul, kid.” No matter your age, he’ll clock your immaturity cutely. Big spender, pretty obvious. Lover boy, who you’ll have to keep an eye on solely for the women who will try you. You end up being at every game and rumored an athletes partner until Toru gets proper mad (extremely jealous he’s not getting the shipping attention and it’s his partner!) and will pop the question at a championship game or whatever. I see a regular fun but albeit stressful travel induced relationship. But one with a thousand memories and fun. Although (please don’t cut me) Gojo isn’t my type at all I don’t know why—he’s def still a 9/10. I can accept dealing with exes and others if you’re ACTUALLY devoted to ME.

Finance Bro Toru: This will not be an openly happy and likely extravagant or extraverted Satoru. This one would be cold and reclusive. It’s likely you only end up on a date with him because he weirdly keeps seeing you on the metro or at his coffee shop or at his favorite lounge. It’ll be nothing to him but he’ll slowly (likely having nothing better to do and being distant from others) people watch doing his best to not accept he only ever watches you. It becomes his break from pressing matters that don’t matter at all to him. How simple but frenzied you are and how you overapologize for knocking over something. How you debated out loud if it was worth asking the Barista to correct your order, then giving up upon mumbling “Oh everyone is so stressed nowadays it’s fine. I’ll just drink it.” How you bristle thinking the man behind you just laughed at you…but how silly that must be to assume on a random man. How he’ll play with his watch and phone outside the shop waiting on you. How he grows impatient and stomps his foot too used to ordering people around and having folks at his beck and call. He’ll cough loudly as you pass by and since you pay him no mind weirdly jogs to catch up to you. “Uh, hey! Hi…Hello,” this dude is weird what does he want. “I—I,” eh he’s cute but…has a stuttering problem? “Yeah guy? What’s up? My train leaves in ten minutes and I got a thirty minute walk before I even get there.” How he doesn’t know how to keep up and finds you abrasive. “I just wanted to ask if you’d like to eat somewhere with me? NOT right now…of course…aha.” You look over the admittedly stunning obvious investor type with consideration. “I thought you had somewhere to be?” He teases. “Oh I do! But…the event I had to get to in ten minutes started an hour ago…lol. I think they’ve accepted my absence by now.” And the both of you would stand awkwardly for like 3-5 good minutes. “So,” you both speak. “Ah you can go sorry about that,” Toru throws. “Well…where you wanna go eat?” And Boom Satoru’s forgotten the seven meetings for today. At first thinking if anything this beautiful stranger can give me a good day. Then when he realizes he’s a late 20 something with no real social life or sense of fun so now you’re damn near seeing him whenever he can. And he’ll love to sneak off to your shabby apartment where his people won’t think to look. “Toru don’t you have a literal meeting with Wells Fargo?” He’ll sour any time you mention work. “Do I have to go to serve a real purpose or just fill in a seat and say yes to whatever they propose?” Well he ate that tbh. So you let him continue eating his Deli sandwich and watching the Bear. Once he loves you he will not even entertain the debate of leaving you because of his role. If anything he’ll propose (albeit inappropriately) at an elite event for the sole sake of making everyone mad. You want to be sure he’s with you for you and not to prove a point or be a “bad boy” and all he does is call up his best friend Suguru in DC and Shoko in Seattle to tell you about how truly terrible your man was as a youth. If anything you bring him back to the source of his actual personality. So you realize this old geezer is actually a retired trouble maker and is absolutely in love with you and getting you both in “trouble.” Easily one of the biggest spenders but deeply intimate so it’ll go either way. He could just be the guy that buys you exactly what you want when you want or the guy that yeah buys you a Rolex without blinking but makes you open ten boxes from huge to miniature all as a gag as he can’t stop laughing at your disappointment. Upon getting to the Rolex he waits for the scream and jumping into his arms. He’ll be a little shitty pervert once you’re in his arms though. 7/10 only cause I romanticized it ALOT but I hate the Uber wealthy and that lifestyle. Plus he’d be much harder to warm up and likely be someone YOU really want to be with tbh😭 AND he’d likely be a victim of a VERY small worldview so unless you code it like dumb rich man meets the real world he’d be insufferable.

Yuuji: Construction Firm CEO/Estate Broker

Yuuji would do construction. Don’t know why he just seems the type…(actually I watch Selling Sunset). He’s less a real estate agent and more an owner of a large estate development firm. If Yuuji ever would decide a life where every day is suits and ties…he’s gonna forgo the tie and remain open shirt to almost an inappropriate degree…he’ll always get requests for “personal” tours but ruins it getting lost in over explaining permitting and how difficult it was to get city approval for zoning. He has the perfect personality for it as it’s an active, hands-on job that’s still people based but also creative. Yuuji is someone who would need a holistically fulfilling job and I think the energy of real estate development is very him.

As a Partner: Full Blown Unintentional Love Bomber. I hate to say it but Yuuji is absolutely someone to fall and fall WAY too hard. I don’t see him being aggressive or forceful but he will appear wherever you are. He’s a well connected, well respected, wealthy man it’s not weird for him to end up at the parties you end at up either. It’s stranger for you to be there but whether you are in his field or of a professional career, a client or someone who just meets him, Yuuji will be the kind to sweep you off your feet. While it’s likely you won’t always physically be around him or able to—he’s the kind to have you on the phone throughout his work day, all day. “Yeah I mean again it was right for you to tell your boss you can’t do someone elses—DIDNT I SAY A DIFFERENT STYLE OF BACKWASH! Portion of the work? If they know there’s gonna be a big client coming then they should’ve—TODO CALL ABOUT THE PERMITS BEFORE I LOSE MY FUCKING MIND!!! Made sure everyone did their portfolio and presentations…do you need me to call up there? You know I know…”(insert CEO you don’t even know of your company’s Name Here lmao). It would all depend on you if how hard he loves is perfect or off putting. He’d love very publicly but would respect your request for reduced or no PDA. He’d just be so happy he has someone tbh. And someone who wants what he wants in a long term, committed way. He’s a lover boy but only in the sense he wants to truly give his heart to someone and take care of someone else’s. Big spender, big protector, big my girl said I can’t come so *shrugs*, very much a “stop telling me how much something is…numbers annoy me, here” and now you got his black card realness. In conflict he will force you into his arms and make sure you scream, cry, and whatever else ;) it all out. You get annoyed he refuses to argue with you and will literally fall silent. How he tells you everyone gets frustrated but he just can’t get frustrated with you as he leaves you for work with a kiss on the forehead. How you get a heat building in your stomach and suddenly want to shop for kid’s clothes. Upon marriage and/or creating a family Yuuji calls Megumi up to design a couple houses. “A couple houses??? We only need one Yu…” You can’t contain your laughter. “One? That is absolutely not enough. We are going to have two family homes—you decide where. You’re gonna have your own condo when you want time to yourself and—babe you know me…thinking of houses for the babies…” meanwhile nobody is pregnant. But you hold your stomach instinctively for some reason. How fatherly and intense made your initial reaction become: “Sure! I mean…how many houses we thinking…?” You chuckle nervously, to which Yuuji just tells Megumi they’ll speak later and rises from his seat towards you. “I don’t know, but for sure one has to look like me and one has to look like you…so what we gonna do about that? Guess we’ll have to keep em coming till that happens, no?” 10/10 I’m so “one and done” like? I do NOT feel like dating 😂

Megumi: Architect/Engineer

I debated whether he would be an Architect or Engineer but if we ever learn their favorite subjects we’ll know if he’s STEM-brained or more humanities based. Either way he’ll do something that’s still creative but methodical. Like Yuuji he’d need full stimulation from his job and I think of course he’d be Yuuji’s business partner who designs the buildings. Likewise a job with purpose and long lasting impact. He’s definitely about sustainability and would incorporate nature similar to Japanese architects like Sou Fujimoto (utilizes unconventional shapes and literal nature) and Kengo Kuma (utilizes shape and literal environment by means of aesthetic cohesion to the surroundings xyz I had to look it up and simplify it 😭💕).

Otherwise he’s some kind of engineer (I’m more humanities so forgive how bad I summarize). Rather than unfamiliar, I’m moreso unsure of which kind of engineering would suit him “the most” but I find of course he’d likely be an industrial, civil, or architectural engineer. He’d want to be useful and in every sense not waste his time or his energy. Maybe a concentration in environmental engineering specifically just cause I see him having a mindset of sustainability and community.

As a Partner: Openly neurotic and pathological about his work so be ready for that kind of man. Will absolutely get mad if you interrupt him working but knowing it’s a him thing will feel guilty about ghosting you for a week…so will continue to ghost you. You’ll have be angry, sad, or simping enough to endure Megumi. He’s definitely introverted and because of the insular nature of his work will be a human black cat. He’ll want his pets when he wants them, cuddles when he wants them, distance when he wants it, etc. You’ll have be used to or okay with someone who may not talk the entire day. Even if he’s not working, I see Megumi just being someone who can and will revel in peace and silence. If you relate that’s perfect and you’ll be two cats in a burrito blanket. If not, he’ll REALLY have to like you to like your possibly disruptive or hyper active nature. And may not be able to appreciate you until you meet Yuuji and Nobara and others. He’ll realize “Yeah, it’s me” realizing just like with everyone else he grew to care about he has to be open and fair and patient. All of a sudden he chuckles more at your dumb jokes or clumsy nature. As a professional, whether it be conferences or grants or fellowships Megumi will end up sought after and very busy. Likely the weight of academics and infrastructure will be visible in his pronounced dark eyes so it’ll take time for him to break out of accepting being overburdened and overworked but your trips to the beach, your propensity to miss deadlines and laugh it off, the way you went to class or work hung over and had an amazing day…he takes it all in and so maybe he won’t accept or feel pressured to do this or that or work overtime on this or help someone with that…he’ll learn how to “overwork” his own way and once he’s consulting with cities on infrastructural improvements and visiting more schools seeing little kids projects on space and noodle bridges he’ll remember how fun what he does is and will kiss you the most passionate he ever has when he gets home. How his hand rests on your stomach and rubs it lightly. “Meg (his albeit reluctantly accepted nickname) your so flirty tonight?! What’s up with you?” He’ll say nothing as he leans into the crook of your neck and breaths. He doesn’t think he’s a charmer but that’s what makes him all the more dreamy to you. How you never could question his sincerity since he’s the living embodiment of it, so how when he wants you—really wants you…it’s easy to lean into him and let him drift your bodies to your bedroom. Empty introverted all up on you cat boy Megumi: 10/10. The functionality of the relationship is a strong 3/10 because he will not prioritize the relationship for a number of MONTHS. He’s a workaholic introvert who is an engineer…whether graduate student, Ph.D, Instructor, or seasoned professional he’s def gonna be hard to deal with. Likewise you’ll have to be really strict with him about replying to you cause he’ll just…not do it. He’ll answer in his head and hope it gets to you…so once you threaten a breakup if he goes a day ever again without replying to you…he’s incredibly responsive and kicks himself at all the day to day conversation he missed out on…so he’ll make up for it.

Upcoming

Yuuta

Sukuna

Toji

Choso

Haibara

Inumaki

87 notes · View notes

wisecrackingeric-2 · 1 year ago

Text

SPOILERS FOR SEPERATE WAYS UNDER CUT N O T OPEN IT IF YOU DONT WANNA SEE EM!!!!!!!!

Here’s my little tiny exploration of Luis’ character because it is my god-given duty to pull him apart and analyse him

• Ok so first off………. THE OPENING SCENE??????????? Oh my god there’s S O MUCH TO TALK ABT. Yes Luis dancing is hot as SHIT but also???????? He was about to get TORTURED and MURDERED and he STILL decided to have fun with it and do a lil dance?????? That’s so!!!!!!!!!! He wants to live out his fantasies right until the end!!!!! He truly does think his confidence can get him anywhere!!!!!!! And then when the dance ends he’s READY TO FISTFIGHT THE MONKS?????? NO WEAPONS HES FULLY ABIUT TO GO FISTFIGHT THEM???? He KNOWS it’s a loosing battle but he’s gonna fight tooth and nail to the very end!!!!!!!!!!!

• Also when he turns to face the person who was also dying in the cell and says “this next dance is for you brother” and we get a close up of his face……….. god it hurts to know that that was a person. Somebody who was beautiful in their own right and maybe even somebody who meant something to Luis. Even in the face of death Luis sees the beauty in it ARGHGAGWHSGSB

• Also also I’m sure SOMEBODY could find meaning behind the Flamenco (somebody more knowledgeable in Spanish culture than me) but I’ve heard some people say it symbolises capture and death???? CAPCOM HOW DARE YOU HURT ME SO

• I LOVE that we get to see a more relaxed side of Luis around Ada and less of his flirtiness and damn. It’s so obvious he and Leon are in Love. He’s trying soooooooo hard to impress Leon every time they talk by being super flirty with him and then whenever he’s with Ada he’s a total nerd he’s soooooooooooooo in love w that blonde twink

• GODDAMN THAT FIRE SCENE. WHAT I S N T THERE TO TALK ABOUT??????? First of all the paralells between his childhood where he watched his grandfather die in a fire?????? Also he FULLY RAN INTO A BURNING BUILDING AND ALMOST DIED J U S T TO GET LEON HIS MEDICINE????????????? HE CARES ABOUT LEON SM I WANNA RIP SOMETHING APART. He didint wanna see Leon die in the same way his Grandfather did because he couldn’t save his Grandfather back then!!!!!!!!!!! He wants to make things right!!!!!! HE WAS LITERALLY ON HIS HANDS AND LNEES CRYING I CANT I CANT

• Also ADA CARES ABT LUIS SM,,,,,,,, SHE RAN INRO A BURNING BUILDING TO SAVE HIM AND MAKE SURE HE DIDINT DIE,,,, THE BESTIES EVAH

• godDAMN that scene where Luis heals Ada?????? I LOVE that we see him hesitate for a good solid few seconds on wether or not he should run away from her or stay,,, wether or not he should go back to his usual habits of running away from the people he loves or stay to help,,,, ANS HE STAYS TO HELP BECAUSE HE CARES ABY ADA AND ALSO??? ADA BEING LIKE “leave me here……… besides…… you’ve got a promise to keep……..” OOOOOOOUGGHHH SHE KNOWS,,,, SHE KNOWS HOW MUCH LEON MEANS TO HIM I CANNOG RN also that lil apothecary thing he had was sooooo gender of him

•OH MY GOD HIS DEATH SCENE WHERE HE CALLS HER?????????????? I don’t remember EXACTLY what he said and I’d have to comb through like hours of footage to find it again but,,,,,. THE FACT THAT HE CALLED HER TO SAY GOODBHE????? HE CARES ABOUT HER RIGHT UMTIL THE END?????? AND HE CALLS HIMSELF HER ‘Good Samaritan’ IN THE SAME WAY HE CALLS HIMSELF DON QUIXOTE TO LEON AOAOAISAUJSSOSISKS,,,,,, and then he’s like “sorry I’ve gotta go Leon needs my help ;)” OUGH,,,,, I’m gonna reference another post from my mutual but it’s so sad that Luis got to spend the rest of his life with Leon but not the other way round………………..

• I’m so glad we got to see more of Luis and more of his personality when he’s not tryna swoon the blonde twink he’s in love with BXNSBEHEJXIAIS he feels like such a deep and real human being especially whenever he interacts with Ada and I just,,,,,,,,,, sigh. He’s my favourite character for a reason. 10/10 no notes

• Edit: also the parallels between Luis calling himself Ada’s ‘Good Samaritan’ and Leon his Sancho like AAAAAAAAAA???? You could pick apart the meaning and argue abt how good samaritans are usually friends and Sancho is a code word for Gay Lover in a lot of old fashioned Spanish bars like how ‘friends of Dorothy’ was but ANSNWUENDUNXXUNDDHXN SHUT UP I can’t rn

•Also I’m SURE you could pull some symbolism from the bugs and from Luis having an apothecary as catholic self-exorcism and how ‘science is the roof of all evil’ and Luis is using it to help others etc etc etc……….

Also if anyone else finds anything abt luis lore wise like how you have to find a picture of his grandfather or of him with Umbrella in the original PLEEEEAAAAASSSWE SHOW ME I NEED MORE LUIS BACKSTORY I NEED IT IN MY VEINS

• ALSO ALSO EDIT: the fact that one of the ingredients for his cure are butterfly wings???? And butterflies symbolise CHANGE????? HIS ENTIRE ARC IS ABT CHANCE??????? I’m actually gonna be sick.

#ericswriting #serennedy #luis sera #luis serra

107 notes · View notes

mapsontheweb · 1 year ago

Photo

Cities by Impressiveness of Mountain Backdrop / Rut

by u/Gigitoe

After seeing the recent posts Cities with a better mountain backdrop than LA? ( u/odi3luck ) and This is a response to the LA mountain backdrop ( u/sam_woke ), I realized that I had the exact tools to answer a particularly niche but interesting question:

How do we quantify how impressive a city's mountain backdrop is?

To answer this question, we use rut, an indicator I developed back in the days to quantify how sharply or impressively the surroundings of a location rise above the location. (my research paper if you're interested)

Roughly speaking, rut works as follows:

The higher the mountains rise above a city, the more impressive they are, and the higher the rut.

The steeper the mountains rise above a city, the more impressive they are, and the higher the rut.

In the map shown, I measured the rut of every city with a population of over 100,000. Here's some cities in each tier and their corresponding rut values:

S tier - rut > 500 m (world-class, would visit for mountain views alone) -

Pokhara, Nepal (1358 m) | Chamonix, France (1336 m) [not on map; population too low] | Zermatt, Switzerland (904 m) [not on map] | Yosemite Valley, CA (617 m) [not on map] | Innsbruck, Austria (584 m)

A tier - rut between 200 to 500 m (impressive, but probably wouldn't visit just for mountain views)

B tier - rut between 100 and 200 m (mountains in close proximity, or big mountains further away)

C tier (glorified hills nearby, or distant mountains, or very distant big mountains) - rut between 25 and 100 m

D tier (hills nearby, or glorified hills in the distance, or very distant mountains) - rut between 10 and 25 m

F tier (flat tier) - rut between 0 and 10 m

So to answer the question, what cities have a better mountain backdrop than Los Angeles? Quite a lot... quite a lot.

Here's the data spreadsheet that was used to generate this map!

Edits: switched Vancouver to downtown measurement, added more cities, switched to steepness explanation instead of proximity explanation.

----------------

Note: rut measurements only consider rise above surroundings (relative height differences and steepness). They do not consider absolute elevation, nor the "aesthetics" of a mountain, nor visibility (or lack thereof) due to weather or smog.

This visualization was made possible with Google Earth Engine, MERIT DEM, and GeoNames.

If you like rut, you'll probably like its older brother jut even more. Jut is an indicator of how impressive, spectacular, or badass a mountain is—considering both its height above surroundings and steepness. If you want to find the most impressive mountains near you or worldwide, you may find the link above to be useful.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments—I'm happy to address them!

#maps #Gigitoe #cities #mountains

154 notes · View notes

gabzilla-z · 2 years ago

Text

ok quick thoughts, spoilers behind the cut.

Pros:

Halle. HALLE. H a l l e. Her voice, her face, her mannerisms. They took what made Ariel special in the animated movie and built on it and she was the perfect person to pull it off.

Her beauty was distracting.

So glad they finally got a singer for a live action, I couldn’t take another B&B autotuned disaster.

Made me want to get to the nearest rock and play mermaid ngl.

I had my doubts with Jonah but he did a great job with Eric, played the shy, kinda awkward potato prince charming to perfection. Loved that they expanded his backstory and his interest in adventure and the sea. Also A+ for the movie knowing he had a white shirt on while surrounded by water and using every chance it had to drench him.

Eric still being caring and worried about Ariel even under Ursula’s spell? 10/10 no notes.

He came to chew bubblegum and be dreamy and he was all out of bubblegum.

Halle and Jonah’s chemistry was insane, I need them to do ten movies making eyes at each other.

Seriously the movie could have been 2 hours of them interacting in that library and it would have been money well spent.

or just two hours of them being cute smol and tol in a boat idc

TRUE LOVE INDEED

Can’t wait for this movie to be out in D+ so I can reblog all the gifs.

Part of Your World and all reprises were ofc gorgeous. Vanessa’s Trick is haunting and exactly what one would want for a siren song. For the First Time is gorgeous and underrated, felt very Broadway-esque. Eric’s song was corny but in a good way.

The rest of the songs are adequate but are not as good as the original ones.

Gotta said, song aside, the Kiss the Girl scene was more endearing in this version. When she helps him figure out her name?

Melissa was good as Ursula and made the character her own, though I think she was not as scary as she could have been. Better than I expected, though.

The actress that plays Vanessa knew she had 5 minutes to make an impression and used them to the fullest. Delightful.

Cons:

The CGI felt unfinished and so did the color grading/lighting. I edited all the movie images in this post (just played with the saturation and the contrast) and I’m mediocre at best. HIRE TUMBLR EDITORS, DISNEY.

Halle deserved to wear more outfits, I can't believe Disney missed an opportunity to sell more dolls. Would have given her a dress for each day on land and the water dress. Mouse, I thought you liked money.

we could have had it all

Wanted more of her sisters tbh. And less Triton, Javier phoned it in imo. I know Triton and Ariel’s relationship is an important part of the original movie but idk if it was his half assed acting or me wanting more of the sisters, but I wasn’t moved.

Flounder's weird character design was saved by his stellar voice actor and Sebastian grew on me, he was hilarious. Scuttlefina was tolerable but gosh she’s always playing the same character, stop casting her in everything.

Less I say about Scuttlebutt the better. Kids are probably gonna love it, though.

The ending was kinda weird? It felt rushed and the battle with Ursula was disappointing. Which is a surprise because the OTHER stormy scene at night was wonderfully done.

Up to Ursula taking Ariel back to the ocean it felt really cohesive but the second Triton appears to save her it was like they were trying to speed things up and it got... weird.

Didn’t mind Ariel being the one that killed Ursula, after everything she put her through.

Cannot believe the movie robbed us of Jonah screaming “I lost her once, I’m not gonna lose her again!”

Overall it was a well paced (up to the finale), entertaining, charming movie. Despite its faults, the only Disney live action I want to rewatch (outside MAYBE Cinderella).

8/10 Justice for the foam dress.

#The Little Mermaid

148 notes · View notes

ladyveronikawrites · 3 months ago

Text

WIP: Kinktober Edition

COUNTDOWN TO KINKTOBER!

@sitkowski and I need a push to write for kinktober and we want to encourage those participating in Kinktober to do the same!

I will be sharing sneak peeks from both my Motionless in White Fics as well as Bad Omens- any and all kinktober related fics are welcome to participate!

MIW Kinktober 2024 Bad Omens Kinktober 2024

HOW IT WORKS (rules modified):

In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; with pairings and kinks included. (You can post more if you are doing both BO and MIW kinktober - keep it to at most 5 files for each band you are participating in, no more than TEN(10) total.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

After you’ve posted, people (any and all readers and writers!) can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write at least three NEW sentences as a reply to the ask.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post.

Friday 9 AM EST to Sunday 11:59EST

Have a question? my DMs are open, feel free to ask!

Please use appropriate warnings, tags, and 'read more' cuts in replies to asks

WHAT I'M WORKING ON

BAD OMENS

BRIDGE PART THREE (Omens! gang bang - leather fetish, boots)

You take his cock so well, doll You want another? (Ruffilo x Jolly x Noah x Reader - Sensory Deprivation, voice kink)

IMPOLITE PART FIVE (Noah x Jolly x oc - Service Submission, tasks, and assignments)

Puppy Play Date! (Pup!Noah x Pup!Folio x Owner!Ruffilo - collaring)

IF PAIN IS BEAUTY, I'M A PRETTY BITCH (Noah x FemDom OC Vivian - Chastity, Humiliation, Sissification//feminization)

MOTIONLESS IN WHITE

oh no, my boyfriend's a vampire (Chris x Nicky - vampire boyfriends/breath play)

Come on Chloe, It's just a haunted house (Stepbrother!Justin x Bio Brother’s Best Friend!Vinny x OC -boots/haunted house)

more cocks more fun right? (Chris x Justin x Rick x Ryan x vinny x oc - multiple penetration /voyeurism)

You got that dawg in you? (Owner!Ryan x Pup!Vinny x oc - tasks and assignments - body worship)

She's going to drive them wild (Chris x Rick x reader - leather/latex -femdom)

A little gift for you👑-You take his cock so well, doll You want another? Ruffilo x Jolly x Noah x Ruby

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” his familiar twang wraps around her like a warm blanket. She should probably be sobbing into her wine glass in a rose-scented bubble bath in the comfort of her home instead she replies with “Whiskey neat, double.”

“That kinda night?” he asks, sliding her the glass of liquor. Ruby just downs the drink and makes her way to the old jukebox in the corner of the bar. She scrolls through the CDs not really impressed with the selection.

ASK!

Writers and Readers are welcome to make requests for snippets of what you would like to see! You can ask for a moodboard too!

#wip weekend #bad omens fanfiction #motionless in white fanfiction #wip snippet #wip sneak peek #bad omens wip #motionless in white wip #bo wip #miw wip #Countdown to kinktober 2024 #kinktober2024

12 notes · View notes

littlefankingdom · 1 year ago

Text

I watched the One Piece live action and here are some notes I took.

I'm a huge One Piece fan since I was like 10-ish? And so, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it. It had a lot of impact on my personality (Nico Robin is my role model). This live action adaptation matters to me and I'm going to rant. Spoilers ahead.

The director is a woman, and one of the two writers is a woman. Manga and anime are male dominated hobby (and the comic's world is sexist), so the live action of the most popular shōnen being run by women is so great, imo. Also, it's pretty successful, in contrary to other attempts, so it's a win for women.

Garp's actor is a very handsome man. Wtf, they made Garp hot. He also has a beautiful Welsh accent, which is great because it's an accent that gives a "tough guy" impression. At least, it does for me.

Luffy's actor is perfect. This Luffy is slightly different from the original one, but he's perfect in his own way. I will die and kill for him. Also, him being brown with a white grandpa is so good, it had a racial gap between the two of them, where there are already a generational one and a moral one. Like, the white grandpa in the army do not understand how his brown grandson do not like the gov, because he doesn't see it from where he is when the kid does.

Alvida's actress is so beautiful, she's so pretty. I suddenly support women's wrongs.

Damn, the violence is going up a notch (Roger executed on screen, Mr 7's body cut in half, MERRY IS FUCKING KILLED,...)

The actors for Koby and Helmeppo are queer (They/Them pals) Oda is, once again, showing his support to the trans community.

I do not like the colors. It's too dark for One Piece, imo. Look at how saturated the colored pages are, I would have preferred it to be more saturated. I know, this is because of the CGI (issues are less perceptible this way), I'm going to need to make some edits. But, they didn't have to do it to the costumes too. Like, Buggy, except from his hat, his outfit is not flashy like it should be. Would help with the colored hair if it was more colorful and flashy.

Young Luffy wear the same shirt as in the manga is a nice touch.

THERE'S A CAVENDISH'S WANTED POSTER IN SHELLS TOWN!

Dead bodies smell strongly, and Zoro is bringing half of one in a bar???

Episode 2 is pure art. I love it so much.

Buggy is attractive, wtf. I find him more pretty than Shanks.

Bogard is so cool looking. I'm gonna die if Hina is introduced one day (she's going to be so cool)

They changed the "If you’re gonna point your gun toward someone, you better use it" scene. The new one is cool, but the original is iconic.

THE MUSIC WHEN LUFFY REALIZES THAT SHANKS LOST HIS ARM! It's like the orchestra is interrupted, incredible, love it.

Nami and Zoro's siblings' energy is so strong.

Kaya and Nami interraction about the dress "it belonged to my mother" is so good, Nami gets uncomfortable because she also lost her mother and knows how it is to cherish her memory. But Kaya is nice and share it with her, which break her view of rich folks.

The decor's department must have had the time of their life for this show. It's a great job.

Zoro wanting to wear black and drink wine in the 3 episode, he's already embodying being Mihawk's adopted brat.

Kaya makes the oof roblox sounds when she slapped Usopp.

Usopp x Kaya let's gooooooooooo my boy deserves the best (Oda confirming a romance with one of his protagonists is huge)

Zoro IMMEDIATELY trying to look at something else the moment Kaya kisses Usopp.

Luffy sitting on Going Merry with "We Are" playing... Art.

Without a cook, they are eating pasta, with some fruit and drink (just like me, fr).

Garp is wrecking a brand new ship!

Episode 5 Title Card, my beloved.

Mihawk music, and voice, and character: beautiful.

"Oh, I do like your hat." Mihawk to Luffy upon meeting him, great.

Sanji needs to stop talking about food, I'm getting hungry but I'm broke and a terrible cook.

"Oregano is for savages!" 😂 ok kiddo.

Me watching Zoro nap for a whole episode because of 1 cut: "Bro, you’re going to go through so much worse, you better stop whining rn"

The "YES, YES WE DO" after Sanji says "heard you guys need a cook" is so good.

Sanji is, like, the only one after Nami to have the most experience sailing, they fucking need him.

Buggy coming back all the time is perfect. Love him.

Having Bell-Mere slaps Nami was not ok. Y'all are ruining a character I loved.

Sanji knows a man that can cook well is attractive.

Usopp and Luffy are 17 and drinking, and Koby is 16. Underage drinking baby 🍻

Garp is already having the crisis he has during Marine Fort Arc, it’s going to be difficult for him.

Buggy be swinging being carried by Sanji, who's fighting.

Luffy breaking Arlong's sword axe thingy is badass.

The fishmen are so ugly and weird looking

Buggy saying "I'm gonna get out of here" with 🖕🤡🖕(If we ever get young Ace, I expect so much vulgarity from his little shit mouth)

Usopp exploding star was badass.

Sanji's ass after Mouton Shot.

Zoro "Yeah, you're gonna fit in just fine" means you're as crazy as all of us

Sanji opening is arms for Nami and Nami ignoring him to hug her bros, lol.

Arlong Park destruction be crazy.

Sanji little laugh.

Luffy is a true bestie to Usopp.

It’s the confrontation from after Seven Arc

It's Logue town after right? Like, where Luffy's father is introduced? With the comparison to Roger? But they just compared them, are they going to do it again?

The wanted poster is the exact same, with usopp in the background.

Employee of the month lol.

Alvida and Buggy meeting, the bad bitches.

Mihawk and Shanks!!! (Shanks gave him the "ableist pos" look, lol)

Smoker introduced -> Logue Town

#one piece #opla #opla spoilers #my ramblings #it's not understandable and I don't care

56 notes · View notes

something-tofightfor · 11 months ago

Text

2023 Year End Summary

I usually use this post as a way to wrap up my year, and this one's no different.

See beneath the cut for some of the highlights of my year - and some thank you notes.

First story post of 2023: Competing For Christmas 6.2 - Let It Snow (The Scavenger Hunt)

Last story post of 2023: The Epilogue of Snow and Mistletoe (which will be posted later tonight)

Most Surprising Thing I Wrote in 2023: Wing Pit Daniel. Who the hell thought this would be a thing? Certainly not me.

Daniel + Vacation /First and 10 / Daniel + Beer / Daniel - Distracting Kiss / Smutsgiving: Sweet Potato Casserole

Something I never thought I'd write in 2023: Sex Pollen for Marcus Pike.

Things I'm proud of writing in 2023:

Tim Rockford Headcanons and the resulting Black Days

Liminality

Joel Miller: NSFW ABC's / All I Ever Needed / Everybody's Waiting For The Next Surprise 1 + 2

Over the course of the year, I wrote just under 434k words on a total of 23 series/stories/events.

This is 65k below where I wanted to be - but I definitely got sidetracked during a few months - including a few where I took vacations or my mental health was in the toilet.

My goal for next year will be 500k words again, but I'm going to set some specific goals for my writing, including finishing a few things that I've neglected for far too long. That includes:

Slopeside

Buried

Locked Down

Caught On

It's Dangerous To Fall In Love

Nightingale

I'm also going to finally release Baseball Jack in his entirety on you in 2024... get ready. I'm not going to lie - 2023 was disheartening from a writing standpoint for a lot of reasons.

Engagement was way down, the same small group of authors and stories seemed to be the only ones getting any sort of traction in the Pedro fandom, plotlines and characterization that I have no interest in writing or reading were the craze - especially for Joel, and actual feedback on things was almost nonexistent.

But that doesn't mean that I'm not proud of what I wrote, how I wrote it or why I wrote it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I'd rather have smaller numbers overall and be absolutely happy with what I've put out and how long it took me to do so than rush things to hop in on current popularity or hope for instant success with a story.

My writing process hasn't changed - and while I appreciate and have respect for people that can and do post things without editing or rereading or sitting on their work and letting it settle, I've never done that, and I never will. I'll also never hold my stories 'hostage' or threaten to keep new chapters under wraps until engagement improves or I hit a certain number of likes/followers/etc. That's unfair - and for something that's supposed to be fun for both writers and readers, it's baffling to me when people do this.

And now on to the fun part: I read some amazing work from some amazing authors this year. The list includes but is not limited to:

@the-blind-assassin-12 @oonajaeadira @littlemisspascal @wildemaven @trulybetty @morallyinept @prolix-yuy @tessa-quayle @grogusmum @whataperfectwasteoftime @keldabe-kriff @katareyoudrilling @undercoverpena ... and so many more. You're able to do things with words and storylines that is SO impressive. We're all lucky to see and read your work. If I didn't include you, please know it's not on purpose. And it's not only writing: it's art, too. @stealyourblorbos @valkblue @thekawaiifruitworld @versatileginger @saminadorazahi @be-an-echo ... your talent is endless. thank you for sharing.

There are so many talented people in this fandom that I wish I had more time to read and admire their work. That's one of my goals for 2024: to consume more content from people on tumblr and A03 and share it. I know I need to do better with this. I know I've been slacking. I don't want to do that anymore. My goal for 2024 is also to make some new friends on here, because to be truthful, I feel a little on the outskirts of so many friend groups, and that's no fun. So if you'd like to message me or say hello or interact, please feel free to do so. I'm also on Discord - somethingtofightfor is my username there. If we've interacted in any way throughout this year, please know that I appreciate you. I thank you for taking the time to read my work or reach out to me. I see all of the comments and messages even if I don't reply right away (something else I'm going to work on getting better about in 2024!!!) Happy New Year to all of you - I hope 2024 is bright and warm and filled with love and support. You deserve it.

#yearly round up #tumblr year end #year end recap #tumblr recap #what i did this year #and what i will do better next year #goodbye 2023 #hello 2024

29 notes · View notes

lingthusiasm · 2 months ago

Text

Transcript Episode 96: Welcome back aboard the metaphor train!

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘Welcome back aboard the metaphor train!’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about metaphors. But first, this episode was originally posted as a bonus episode in August of 2019.

Lauren: Ever since March 2017, we’ve been doing bonus episodes alongside main episodes every month for people who support us at the Lingthusiast level and above on Patreon. They’re our way of thanking people who support us on Patreon. As a show that doesn’t have sponsors or advertising, it’s your direct support that keeps the show going.

Gretchen: The good news is that we’re not part of some network that can just decide we’re not allowed to make the show anymore. When we first started the bonus episodes, they were a bit shorter than the main episodes because we wanted to make sure that it’d be sustainable to keep up a regular production schedule.

Lauren: You’d think after doing this show for eight years we would’ve made Lingthusiasm a lean and efficient production. And yet, it turns out, we still take a lot of time to put these episodes together because we just keep having higher standards.

Gretchen: Yeah. We definitely do a lot more research now because some of the early topics we covered were stuff that we already had a whole bunch of background on, and so we didn’t need to do quite as much digging into other sources and asking other people – our many linguist friends and colleagues – for their suggestions and input, which we do a lot more of now.

Lauren: This is also true for the bonuses. They went from being these 10-to-20 minutes on things like the linguistics of swearing or what we mean by the word “sandwich,” and then they very quickly – like, within about 12 months – became very similar to main episodes both in length and in structure and the amount of research that we do.

Gretchen: We do sometimes do a bonus episode that is a deep dive into a single research article, like the time we discussed Bill Labov sneaking a rabbit into a primary school.

Lauren: Hm, yes, classic.

Gretchen: Or the time we talked about the very classic salad-salad paper, which is about, you know when you have egg salad and potato salad and then “salad-salad.”

Lauren: We also have bonuses where we’ve done things like attempt to create a computer-generated transcript of Lingthusiasm with Janelle Shane, or we’ve done Q&A episodes. We have at least 90 bonus episodes available to you right now, which make a really fun catalogue of listening alongside the main episodes.

Gretchen: They can be a bit of a blast from the past if you go back to some of the very early ones. If you’re someone who’s always got a lot of podcast episodes on the back burner, and you don’t really need more listening material, but you’d just like to help us keep existing long into the future, we also really appreciate your support for whatever reason you wanna give it to us.

Lauren: We’re really proud of our bonus episodes, and we wanted to give them a bit more attention. We’ve taken this older bonus to share with you today.

Gretchen: Also, frankly, this gives us a bit of a break while still giving you something to listen to.

Lauren: Yeah, it’s nice to have a bit of a breather. We’ve been putting up monthly episodes since December 2016 and bonuses since March 2017. We’ve never even been a day late on those.

Gretchen: I’m very impressed by us, Lauren.

Lauren: We’ve definitely got into a good routine. We plan to continue sharing many more mains and bonuses with you. But it’s really fun to also get to revisit some of our older episodes.

Gretchen: Occasionally, building in a break into our production schedule is something that also helps us keep the show sustainable.

Lauren: This episode is all about how metaphors are something that is deeply embedded into the way we talk about everyday things. What’s one thing you noticed about re-listening to episode, Gretchen?

Gretchen: This metaphor episode aired right around the time that my book, Because Internet, was coming out. You can hear how I’m maybe a bit nervous about that.

Lauren: In fact, the original intro had a call to pre-order the book, which –

Gretchen: So, we’ve cut that.

Lauren: We’ve cut that because you can actually order it now.

Gretchen: That ship’s sailed. You can just buy it. It’s fine.

Lauren: It’s so funny to think that Because Internet has been out for five years. I mean, it’s also a complete testament to your work that it is so relevant after five years, which, is like, half-a-century in internet time.

Gretchen: Yeah. I’ve still seen people recommending Because Internet to each other, even just this week. There’s actually an extended metaphor in the final chapter of Because Internet about how we should think of language like a massive, collective, participatory project, like the internet itself, rather than as a book, which is static and unchanging. I can’t believe that past Gretchen didn’t think to give myself a plug in the previous version of this episode. What did you notice listening to this episode, Lauren?

Lauren: I was really confused how we got through a whole episode on metaphor, and we didn’t talk about metaphoric gestures, which is a whole category, and one that I’ve been obsessed with for a really long time.

Gretchen: Well, that may have been because we talked about gesture and metaphors two bonus episodes earlier in the interview with Alice Gaby.

Lauren: Ah, yeah. We talked about time and space metaphors, how time – which is not a thing you can easily pin down. We often use space to talk about it. In English, we talk about and we gesture about the past being “behind” us.

Gretchen: And we talk about looking “ahead” to the future. This pops up in a lot of Western cultures in speech, in gesture, and even in the way that signed languages in Western cultures construct how they do tense. ASL – American Sign Language – has the past behind us and the future ahead of us. So does LSF – French Sign Language. I haven’t checked all of the other signed languages in the LSF family because it’s a huge family, but this seems to be something that carries over from a similar cultural context.

Lauren: Yeah, it’s the same for Auslan and other signed languages related to BSL, which are not related to American Sign Language, but they share this cultural metaphor of the past behind you as an influence on the tense system. I mean, that’s not the case for all languages. There’s Aymara, which is spoken in the north of Chile and in bordering countries. In Aymara, there’s a metaphor about the past being in front of you.

Gretchen: Which, when you think about it, actually makes sense because you can see what’s already happened, and you can’t see what’s going to happen, so it makes sense to put that behind your head where you can’t see it, but that’s just not what we do in English and a lot of other Western cultures. I remember in that episode, we talked to Alice about her work with Kuuk Thayorre in Northern Queensland here in Australia, where their metaphor for time is that time moves from east to west, just like the sun.

Gretchen: Oh, that makes sense.

Lauren: But they don’t use it in their speech. They just use it in their gestures.

Gretchen: Oh, yeah, like how English speakers will gesture from left to right for a sequence of events, whereas speakers of languages that are written from right to left would gesture in the other direction.

Lauren: Yeah. There’s also evidence of Chinese speakers gesturing from top to bottom for time, especially discussing different generations in a family, which is part of the writing system influence on gesture.

Gretchen: It’s so interesting how metaphors get picked up and shared between cultures and how there are so many different levels of embedded metaphor in how humans do language. It was really fun to record this original episode, and absolutely a delight to revisit it.

Lauren: Just a quick note that this bonus is before we went through our second major round of updating our microphone situation for this show. Again, a nice way to look at how far we’ve come, look back to times before.

Gretchen: But at least it’s after the first time that we’ve updated our mic situation, which we would not subject you to. Both of those were thanks to patron support.

Lauren: If you want to get access to over 90 other bonus episodes like this one and many, many other topics, there’s a new bonus every month at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: “Lauren, look how far we’re come.”

Lauren: “Hm. I feel like we’re at a crossroads.”

Gretchen: “Are you saying we’ll just have to go our separate ways?”

Lauren: “I just feel like we can’t turn back now.”

Gretchen: “I don’t know if this relationship is going anywhere.”

Lauren: “This year has been a long and bumpy road.”

Gretchen: “It’s really a dead-end street.” [Laughter] Okay. So…

Lauren: How long do you think we can keep that up for?

Gretchen: We’re not breaking up the podcast. We’re not breaking up the band. Please don’t worry about this. We are merely exploring how you can use an extended metaphor to talk about a relationship as a physical journey.

Lauren: A metaphor is when you take features of one thing, and you apply them to something else – is the most basic way. Here, we’re talking about a podcasting friendship, but we’re using all of these features of a physical journey to talk about that.

Gretchen: Things like, “going anywhere,” “long, bumpy road,” “dead-end street,” “crossroads,” “turning back” – some of these are so engrained in the way we talk about relationships with people that you don’t even necessarily think of them as metaphors anymore. Something like “Look how far we’ve come” or “We’ll have to go our separate ways” is technically a metaphor. Going different ways is a physical thing you can do. But it’s so engrained in the way we talk about emotional relationships, or friendships, or these kinds of things that we don’t even necessarily think about them as a metaphor.

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, I’m still gonna be here in Melbourne. You’re still gonna be in Montreal. If we were to quote-unquote “go our separate ways,” we would not change anything about our physical location.

Gretchen: In fact, if we were to go in different directions, we would, statistically, probably end up closer together on this physical Earth-orb.

Lauren: Closer together, yeah.

Gretchen: Just saying.

Lauren: We’re so used to thinking in metaphors. I think this idea of extended metaphors – I think when I learnt about metaphors in high school, it was like you do one clever thing in one sentence with some words. But, actually, the thing I love about metaphors is that they are kinda pervasive in the way that we think.

Gretchen: Yeah. I remember learning “My love is a red, red rose” or something like this and thinking, “Okay. Well, that’s fine. I guess this poet’s gonna do this.” But the kind that are really fascinating are the ones that we use every day without even thinking about them as much. Do we wanna do a bit of etymology?

Lauren: Yeah. I think so.

Gretchen: “Metaphor” comes via French via Latin from the Greek “metapherein,” meaning “transfer” – from “meta-,” which means “over,” and “-pherein,” which means “to bear or to carry.” The “meta-” also shows up in other prefix like “metaphysics,” which is like “over physics.” Or sometimes you talk about something being very “meta.” It’s beyond the literal sense. “-Pherein” meaning “carry” shows up in –

Lauren: Oh, like “transfer.”

Gretchen: Well, that’s the Latinate equivalent. “-Pherein” shows up in other words like “paraphernalia,” which are the extra things you carry around with you. Or “semaphore.”

Lauren: “Semaphore” like the flags?

Gretchen: Yeah. Like the flags, which I guess are probably signs that you carry.

Lauren: Hmm.

Gretchen: It’s less-directly related to F-E-R in Latin, as in “transfer” itself. A metaphor carries something over – carries an idea over – from one domain to another and often from a concrete domain to a more abstract domain.

Lauren: This goes back to one of our favourite themes on the show, which is the idea that humans are just giant meat puppets and language is always kind of tied to the very physical-ness of our human bodies.

Gretchen: Even when we’re talking about really abstract ideas, it’s easier to do so if we evoke very physical things in the world.

Lauren: You find that a lot of the metaphors have a consistent – especially, even if you look cross-culturally, there’s some variation. We’ll talk about that. But overall, there’s these common features where, if something is good, it’s upwards, and bad is downwards. Happy is upwards and sad is downwards. There’s this kind of correlation between this, and it has to do with the fact that we are bipedal and vertical beings.

Gretchen: We have to struggle against gravity. If you managed to succeed against gravity and stand up, that’s probably good. If you’re lying flat on the ground, maybe you’re dead or something. Another one that I really like is phrases like “to grasp” a concept or “to gather” what you’ve understood. That uses a physical action of picking up or holding something as a metaphor for understanding something.

Lauren: Again, ideas are very vague and abstract. And so we turn ideas into physical concepts, like little physical blocks. I can “give” you this idea. Or we could “put” all our ideas together.

Gretchen: Or sometimes we use sight to talk about ideas – I “see” what you mean or that sounds “clear” to me. Those are using a different metaphor to talk about a similar domain because ideas are very abstract. I had a really fun experience a few months ago when I learned that the German word “wichtig,” which I’d always had trouble remembering, means “important.” That’s fine. They clearly didn’t borrow it from Latin and French like English did. But I always was like, “Okay, ‘wichtig.’ That sounds like it should have some sort of word that’s related to it in English,” but that word that I think of it being related to in English is definitely not anything sounding like “important.” Then I learned that it could also be translated as “heavy,” which is also “gewichtig,” which thereby makes it cognate with “weighty.”

Lauren: Ooo, a “weighty” idea.

Gretchen: Yeah. A “weighty” idea is an important idea, right?

Lauren: That sits really well with me.

Gretchen: Exactly. And even if I wouldn’t necessarily talk about a weighty idea myself, I can use that as a memory peg for “Oh, ‘wichtig.’ Something’s a weighty idea – it’s important.” Or a person is “wichtig” – they’re weighty. They’re important. They’ve got dignitas and gravitas they’re bringing to the room.

Lauren: We are absolutely by no means the first people to observe these features of metaphors as being very grounded in our experience and kind of extended across lots of little examples mapping onto this one big idea. This is something that’s come out of a field called “cognitive semantics.” George Lakoff is one of the key practitioners. You may have heard of him. He likes to do public commentary on big cultural metaphors a lot. But lots of people have been working on this over the years – documenting or looking at these pervasive metaphors, looking at how they vary across cultures. One of my absolutely favourite things about this area is a study by Gentner & Gentner from 1982 that shows how not only do these metaphors exist in our brain, but they can affect the way we think about and process information in the world. They had a study where they were teaching people how electric circuits work. They had two different metaphors. The first is moving people through a series of passages.

Gretchen: So, tunnels like you might send people down to the subway in our something like that?

Lauren: Yeah. That was your wires – your courses or passages. And then your –

Gretchen: Electrons?

Lauren: Electrons are little people. And then the current is how many people can go through the passage. Voltage is how many people are pushing. You map those things. They taught a whole bunch of people that metaphor for how an electric circuit works. Then, they taught a different group of people a metaphor for electric circuits on a hydraulic water-pumping system.

Gretchen: So, now your pipes are your wires, and the water is your electrons or something.

Lauren: Yep. Then, the flow rate of the water is the current – as opposed to the flow rate of people. Once they taught them these metaphors – you kind of figured them out as soon as I said them. They have obvious mappings between the original domain and these areas that they were using as metaphors. Once they taught people the metaphors, they got them to think about electrical systems using the metaphors – things like serial versus parallel battery configurations, which is definitely a thing I remember learning about in high school physics. Don’t really remember the science behind –

Gretchen: I don’t think I did. If I did, I don’t remember it. But I don’t even know if I ever learned it.

Lauren: They found that – because the way batteries are cabled up, if you have them all lined up together or you have them all coming off different cables and coming back, it affects how things like voltage and resistance work. If people learnt the flowing water metaphor, they could figure out the better outcome of how that works. Having the water pumped through different pumps was a better analogy for batteries. But if you’re looking at serial versus parallel resistor configurations – and who amongst us has not? –

Gretchen: Me, actually.

Lauren: – the crowed passages of people actually gave you a better metaphor for correctly predicting what would happen in that circumstance.

Gretchen: Oh, that’s interesting. Different metaphors can help you reason about different domains.

Lauren: Yeah. But a metaphor can only take you so far, right? Even though both of them are pretty good metaphors, and you could figure them out even without knowing a whole lot about how electrical systems worked –

Gretchen: And definitely not know anything about resistors or batteries.

Lauren: – the metaphor can only go so far.

Gretchen: Yeah. Right. That makes sense. I mean, we do this sometimes when we’re coming up with episode topics. We’ll say, “Okay. We’re gonna need a metaphor to talk about verbs. What are some physical objects that have similar properties to the things that we wanna talk about with respect to verbs?” or with respect to sounds or various other types of pieces in language, which can be fairly abstract, to say, “Let’s give people a very concrete object that they can touch, or they can visualise, and have some sense of how it works.”

Lauren: We spent ages with the coat rack one, which was explaining how verbs help structure sentences. We kept stress-testing the metaphor.

Gretchen: I remember that one because we recorded that episode when I was visiting you in Australia. I remember we went for a walk the day before we recorded it saying, “We need a metaphor. Let’s talk through a bunch of different possibilities. What are some things that have multiple relationships with each other?” I ended up being very pleased with the coat rack metaphor in that episode, but it took us walking through a bunch of different metaphors. I know we rejected the verb is like the skeleton and the other parts of the sentence are like body parts that can hang onto that because one of the big problems –

Lauren: You can rearrange coat racks much easier than you can rearrange human skeletons.

Gretchen: We really didn’t want to go super gruesome, even though sometimes a skeleton is used as a metaphor like, “This is the backbone of the industry,” or “The skeleton key can open different things” – something like that. A skeleton is sometimes used as a metaphor in a non-gruesome sense, but in this particular context, we really wanted to talk about things going on and off. It was just gonna end up really bloody.

Lauren: The thing I found fascinating is we recorded that whole episode, and we actually had different physical coat racks in our minds.

Gretchen: Because you had the coat rack in your mind that’s the kind that you hang against the wall?

Lauren: No, I had the freestanding coat rack.

Gretchen: You had the freestanding one. Maybe I had the one hanging against the wall. I kind of had both maybe.

Lauren: Turns out Gretchen’s idea of a coat rack is much more fast-and-loose than mine. I had a very specific physical model in my head when I was building the metaphor.

Gretchen: Well, because I think I call a “coat rack” – it has to be hanging against the wall. Versus the other kind I call a “hall tree” or a “coat tree.”

Lauren: That’s a cute metaphor.

Gretchen: Yeah! It’s also a metaphor. Look at that! But it doesn’t really matter because, in the end, the thing that was relevant of “How many hooks do you have?” and these kinds of things was sufficiently parallel for the particular thing that we were talking about. There are actually people whose professional job it is to design metaphors.

Lauren: That’s a pretty fun job.

Gretchen: It always seems like a very cool job to me. One of them is Michael Erard, who works for The Frameworks Institute as a professional metaphor designer. I think that was an institution that Lakoff founded, right?

Lauren: Yeah. He’s definitely involved in some way. I think he founded it.

Gretchen: One of the examples of a metaphor that they designed at Frameworks was looking at children’s executive function – how your brain is organised and how much you control how you do things – as if it’s air traffic control for your brain. Air traffic controllers are obviously those people who are telling the airplanes when they can come down. The insight that they had from this was, yes, it’s important to be organised – and training and runway space is also important – but, ultimately, there can also only be so many planes in the air or you just overload your brain’s air traffic controllers. If you’re wondering why children are frustrated and unable to do all the things they want to do, maybe they could just only keep so many planes in the air. You can support that to a certain extent by improving their organisational skills, but you can’t expect people to keep more planes in the air than they’re capable of doing.

Lauren: Yeah. In order to sell this metaphor, they had to do what we do for the episodes. They kind of test them and make sure that all the implications of the metaphor aren’t potentially problematic.

Gretchen: There was another metaphor that I remember reading Michael Erard criticising, which was there was some sort of metaphor about dandelion children versus orchid children.

Lauren: Oh, dear.

Gretchen: The problem with this metaphor is, is that, okay, these are two different flowers. People know what these flowers are.

Lauren: I’m trying really hard to sit here and be like “Dandelion children are… yellow?” No, because you get yellow orchids. Do you get yellow orchids?

Gretchen: Dandelion children supposedly, according to this metaphor, can kind of bloom wherever they’re planted, whereas orchid children require more delicate care and feeding – or delicate emotional attention.

Lauren: Oh, I was thinking of irises.

Gretchen: In theory, this is a useful distinction. But the problem is, is that people have very different values associated with dandelions versus orchids. So, everyone’s like, “Oh, great. I want my kid to be an orchid kid.” And that was actually what they were trying to call attention to as like, “It’s dangerous for your kid to be an orchid kid. How can we create more dandelions?” because dandelions thrive everywhere.

Lauren: In my brain it’s like “weed children” versus “ugly children.”

Gretchen: Yeah. I mean, some people like orchids, Lauren. The problem was most people, on average, like orchids more than they like dandelions. Even though the metaphor kind of works from a characteristic property sense, I guess, it also comes with a value judgement that ultimately made it not a very good metaphor for trying to help people improve their parenting practices.

Lauren: Was also ignoring a lot of other characteristics.

Gretchen: Yeah. Like, “Make your child more like a dandelion and less like an orchid” is a really hard sell to parents.

Lauren: Every time I think of orchids, I think of people using little spray bottles. Now, I’m thinking of people spray-bottling their children.

Gretchen: They’re very finicky. They grow in these greenhouses and stuff like that, whereas dandelions will just grow in the cracks in the sidewalk. You can see why maybe you want your kid to be able to bloom wherever they’re planted. That sounds like a good idea. And yet, orchids are just so rare and valuable that this also seems like a really good idea. One better metaphor that I actually heard Michael Erard talk about at the polyglot conference in New York City a number of years ago was that he came up with a new metaphor for language learning. He said that it’s developing a complex skill like weaving a rope. In this metaphor, a good rope has many strands, which have to be woven together tightly in order for the rope to be strong. The strands and the techniques of weaving the rope are like the skills that you begin with, and that you learn, and you develop as you’re doing it. But the rope won’t weave itself. It’s not just you learn the language and it’s done. It’s that you’re building up all of these different stands and putting them together and that you have a lot of time and effort going into putting it together. Once it’s complete, the rope is a useable thing – a tool. You can do something with language when you’ve learned it. But some people think of learning a language as like filling a bucket or something. You poured in the language and there it is. You never have to do anything else. This idea emphasising the process and all of the different steps of learning a language could be useful to people thinking about their own language learning more productively.

Lauren: Nice. I like that metaphor.

Gretchen: It’s quite nice. Because I think, as linguists, we often face the “How many languages do you know?” question. And the “know” implies that there’s an endpoint. If you talk about weaving a rope, it’s very clear that there isn’t one logical size of rope that then you have the rope – that a rope can be infinitely long, in theory.

Lauren: Yeah. I now just have a few strings of Polish.

Gretchen: Exactly. You can conceive of having different amounts of – or like, I have some raggedy old whatever language that I’ve forgotten, or I’ve just acquired the shiny new string of another language.

Lauren: We’ve talked a lot so far about metaphors being shared in a particular group of people. When you have the cultural references, “dandelion children” versus “orchid children” make sense. But even as someone who is ostensibly from the culture that that metaphor was designed for, I failed. When you look across cultures, you do get culturally grounded knowledge that’s required to understand metaphors. I teach this with a metaphor from the Songhai language in Mali. I want you to see what you can make of this metaphor, Gretchen.

Gretchen: Okay.

Lauren: “The words of the elders are like the droppings of the hyena.”

Gretchen: Okay. I’ve definitely never seen hyena droppings. But “words of the elders” are probably good, right? So, that must mean that there’s cultural things the droppings of the hyena are also good, which means that I’m reasoning from the abstract to the concrete domain rather than the other way around, which is presumably what this metaphor actually wants me to be doing.

Lauren: You’re back-logic-ing.

Gretchen: Yeah. If I’m thinking of the droppings of a bear or a deer or something, which is an animal that I’m more familiar with, you could use those to tell where they’re going and maybe be better at hunting them. It gives you information and clues and stuff. So, maybe that’s also what they think about the hyena droppings?

Lauren: I mean, I guess the first thing is that equating anything with poo is generally seen as negative in our culture.

Gretchen: Right. I was trying to be positive because presumably they’re not like, “Oh, those elders. They’re talking such bull” – you know.

Lauren: Bull poo.

Gretchen: BS.

Lauren: The culturally relevant knowledge that you need here – or the locally relevant knowledge that you don’t have – is that hyena droppings are opaque and cloudy when they’re first done, and then they kind of become see-through and transparent. I don’t know how this works. But this is apparently a fact.

Gretchen: This is not a chemistry podcast.

Lauren: And so the words of the elders are initially unclear and opaque, but like a good prophesy, they become clearer – or their wisdom becomes clearer – over time.

Gretchen: Oh! That’s really good. That’s really elegant.

Lauren: Yeah. It is a really elegant metaphor but only if you know how hyena droppings work.

Gretchen: Which clearly, I didn’t know. I was just trying to base that on other droppings of other animals, which don’t have this very specific, translucifying property.

Lauren: I think metaphors are always one of those – there are sentences when I’ve learnt languages where it’s like, “I understand each one of these words. I don’t really know what this sentence means,” because metaphors are definitely some of those more elaborate rope-weaving parts of the language learning process – to borrow Michael Erard’s metaphor.

Gretchen: Understanding the literal words doesn’t necessarily mean you have the cultural context. Sometimes, it’s a cultural reference like if you’re making some sort of “Oh, this is from a game show 30 years ago that everyone used to watch and we still make this reference,” but actually if you haven’t seen this gameshow, you don’t know that that’s where it’s coming from or something like that.

Lauren: I think also we’ve talked a lot about – that metaphors are kind of persistent and they have these big, extended uses. But just because we have a cognitive image of how things map from one domain to the other doesn’t mean that we don’t mess them up.

Gretchen: And people do mess them up. This is known sometimes as a “malaphor,” which is like a metaphor but gone bad – specifically named often the Dickensian character Mrs. Malaprop, who used to get words mixed up. But also just “mal-” in general is bad. You get things like, “I wouldn’t trust him with a tent-foot pole.”

Lauren: Oh, no! That’s combining “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: And “I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.”

Gretchen: Yes. Then you end up with “I wouldn’t trust him with a ten-foot pole,” which you could say, but it’s not an existing metaphor in our culture.

Lauren: But it’s actually quite satisfying because it combines both of them.

Gretchen: Exactly. I’ve got a list of some of these malaphors. If you, Lauren, would like to try to identify what the original metaphors are. Or we can go back and forth if you want because maybe –

Lauren: Yeah. Let’s do that. If you’re playing along at home, you can get your phone or your computer out and hit the pause button and argue away with people that you’re listening with.

Gretchen: Yeah. See if you can guess before us. Okay. Do you wanna go first then?

Lauren: Sure. “Don’t judge a book before it’s hatched.”

Gretchen: Ah! This is definitely true about my book. Okay. I think that’s combining “Don’t judge a book by its cover” and “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” What about “Every cloud has a silver spoon in its mouth”?

Lauren: Oh, this is riffing on “silver” for both of them, I think, because it’s “Every cloud has a silver lining,” which means that even bad things can have good bits to them. And if someone’s born with a silver spoon in their mouth – which I used to imagine literally. The problem with metaphors. But it just means that they are super fancy.

Gretchen: You mean your baby was not born with a silver spoon in its mouth?

Lauren: Thankfully.

Gretchen: Yes. I think that’s what those are.

Lauren: “It’s not rocket surgery.”

Gretchen: I think that’s pretty easy, right? “It’s not rocket science” and “It’s not brain surgery.” I guess you could also have “It’s not brain science.” That’s not quite as catchy.

Lauren: Doesn’t quite capture it, does it?

Gretchen: “You can’t teach a leopard new spots.”

Lauren: Ah. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” but “You can’t change a leopard’s spots.”

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: That one’s a really elaborate mashup.

Gretchen: That one’s pretty elaborate.

Lauren: “The train has left the frying pan.”

Gretchen: “The train has left the station.” And I guess “Out of the frying pan into the fire” or something?

Lauren: Yeah. So, the train is on its way to the fire, I guess, is the visual image we’ve got going here.

Gretchen: Yeah. “Until the cows come home to roost.”

Lauren: “Until the cows come home.” Is that a thing?

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: And your “Chickens come home to roost.”

Gretchen: Yeah. I think “Until the cows come home” is like, “We’ll be talking about this until the cows come home” – like forever. And then the “Chickens come home to roost” is another farm metaphor.

Lauren: I guess we should say that malaphors also just encompass general aphorisms and sayings which may not actually be metaphors in the way we always think about them. But they’re all grouped in together like this.

Gretchen: And because they’re so fun to look at.

Lauren: And because they’re so fun, we’re just gonna share a few more. “Until the pigs freeze over.”

Gretchen: Oh, this is good. This is “Until pigs fly” with “Until hell freezes over.” I guess you could also do “Until hell flies,” but I don’t know if that works as well. “It’ll be a walk in the cake.”

Lauren: See, this combines “It’ll be a walk in the park” with “It’ll be a cake walk.” And a “cake walk” is a thing I do not know what it is, but I know that it means that it will be easy.

Gretchen: When I was in school, they used to do cake walks sometimes as charity fund raisers.

Lauren: What was that?

Gretchen: They weren’t especially easy. I don’t know if this is the only kind of cake walk there is. But they were kind of like musical chairs, but the last person left would win a cake, basically.

Lauren: Oh. Combines a thing I hate – musical chairs – with a thing I love – winning cakes. It also shows how idioms and metaphors can contain fossilised knowledge that we now no longer have.

Gretchen: Yeah. Exactly.

Lauren: A cake walk is now more common in a saying than an actual event – in my life. Although not in yours, apparently.

Gretchen: We also get, in addition to the very tightly mixed up malaphors, you get longer mixed metaphors, which is when you end up with two metaphors referring to the same thing. Ideas can be both things you grasp and also things you see but mixing them in a way that seems sort of weird. Something like “If we can hit that bullseye, then the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!” You’ve got a whole bunch of different game metaphors all stacked up on top of each other that each of them would work individually, but together they end up with a really confusing set of imagery.

Lauren: Should say that was Futurama character Zapp Brannigan, known for being a bit of a dolt. That was a very deliberately constructed mixed metaphor.

Gretchen: Yes, that’s true. I mean, this tends to happen with maybe only two examples in a more realistic sense.

Lauren: I guess it shows how the brain can kind of operate with different metaphors happening at the same time.

Gretchen: Can we end this episode with my very favourite metaphor pun?

Lauren: Yes, please!

Gretchen: “Metaforce be with you!”

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all the podcast platforms or lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode on lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them including IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch – like our “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and aesthetic IPA posters – at lingthusiasm.com/merch. My social media and blog is Superlinguo.

Gretchen: Links to my social media can be found at gretchenmcculloch.com. My blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book about internet language – now somehow five years old – is Because Internet. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you wanna get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes – like this one – to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Recent bonus topics include playful mishearing like spoonerisms –

Lauren: You mean “roonerspisms.”

Gretchen: – Mondegreens and eggcorns, as well as an episode on comparatives and superlatives –

Lauren: The best.

Gretchen: – and an episode on “do support.”

Lauren: “I don’t mind if I do.”

Gretchen: Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Editorial Assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#linguistics #lingthusiasm #language #podcast #podcasts #episodes #transcripts #metaphors #malaphors #episode 96 #semantics #bonus updgrade #choo choo!

9 notes · View notes